Two Things that Keep Me From Switching to Opera

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Two Things that Keep Me From Switching to Opera

The recent preview of Opera 10.50 has shown that the Opera development team is dedicated and willing to improve their web browser even if it does not get the attention that it deserves. That speed increase coupled with other interesting features and options like Opera Turbo or Opera Unite make Opera a very attractive web browser which should help increase the browser’s share of the browser market if the word gets out to the mass market.

There are two things that are keeping me personally from switching to Opera. I would like to outline those two below with the hope that these features get added eventually to the web browser:

1. Password Manager

Like every web browser Opera has a build in password manager. What it does not have is support for the excellent Last Pass service that has been ported to many web browsers. Last Pass is a password management service that makes it much easier to create and maintain accounts. Some of its features are a password generator, form profiles, online access to passwords and auto-login to websites.

Last Pass is currently supporting various web browsers including Firefox and Google Chrome. The only option to use it in Opera is the Last Pass bookmarklet which provides limited functionality as it only provides login or form filling support but not other features like generating passwords.

The developer’s of Last Pass state that they would love to create a version of their service for the Opera web browser. The nature of the web browser, in particular the missing or limited browser SDK, makes it impossible at this point.

The build in password managers are no alternative at this point and the bookmarklet is not either. Opera Link provides data syncing but it is limited to Opera only. The benefit of Last Pass is that the stored passwords can be used with any web browser that is supported by Last Pass.

NoScript like functionality

The second feature that I do not want to miss anymore is provided by the NoScript Firefox add-on which turns of all scripts on any website by default. That’s a security precaution as scripts are usually used to attack computers.

Opera has a feature to disable some scripts globally and per website. The problem here is that this would require lots of manual work. The only viable option would be to disable scripts globally and enable them on a per site basis.

NoScript on the other hand offers a finer handling. Opera’s per site settings enable JavaScript, plugins, Flash or Java for the whole site and all scripts of that type that are executed on the website. NoScript can be used to enable a specific script (e.g. JavaScript) but block all other JavaScripts on a website.

Conclusion

I’d really like to switch. I’d might be able to either get used to the bookmarklet (with additional help of tools to generate secure passwords) or switch to Opera’s build in password manager. It would be possible to sync the passwords across all Opera browsers but other web browsers would not be able to use those passwords then.

NoScript on the other hand is the real culprit. It does not look as if there will be an option in the near future that comes close to the functionality of NoScript.

I’m currently trading speed and reliability for support of these two extensions.

Are you thinking of switching to Opera as well? Or have you already switched? What’s keeping you or why did you make the move?